What’s a Records Manager to do when users across the organisation are uploading non-compliant scanned images to the corporate EDRMS?  In many cases this is occurring because the organisation has deployed multifunction devices (MFDs) and staff are making use of the inbuilt scan functionality.

This is all very well, but this can lead to challenges for records management staff that have to deal with a variety of different document formats being uploaded. Somehow these must be translated into the text-searchable PDF/A format in order to comply with records management policies and digitisation standards.

While some may say that it would be easier to convert to PDF/A at the source when the original document is scanned, this is not always possible when the scanning is being undertaken by general staff in the course of their business. 

This approach may also require dedicated OCR software solutions to be implemented at each MFD. These solutions using special MFD OCR kits can be expensive and may not be compatible with certain MFDs. To make it worse when upgrading MFDs new OCR kits have to be purchased. 

Additional problems may arise over compatibility of the kits with certain MFDs and their inability to create compliant images or include PDF compression.

EzeScan has developed its own solution to dealing with this scenario via a centralised server that can provide a decentralised scanning solution for a large network that includes a wide variety of different MFD brands.

Local users scan as usual at their MFD without having to worry about a special interface or complicated instructions, they can choose the scan-to-email option while the central server then translates the output images so they are PDF/A compliant.  Alternatively compliant scanned documents can be sent from the MFD direct to the supported EDRMS via the EzeScan SERVER utilising barcoded documents or MFD templates.

The EzeScan SERVER can also be installed as a virtual machine.

Where volumes of incoming documents are high, multiple instances of the server can be installed, and the resulting PDF/A documents forwarded to an email address or stored in an EDRMS such as SharePoint, TRIM or Objective.

Mike Kirkby, Managing Director of EzeScan developer Outback Imaging, said, “The use of PDF/A for long term storage needs has grown in Australia and New Zealand in recent years. There is an increasing need for solutions that can run as a service with no user interface to take the headache out adopting PDF/A for document workflow.”